What makes Aeroponics more difficult?

Darth Vapour said:

That is a pretty wild looking picture problems i can see with Aero is being your limiting your self you can only put so many watts per sq foot in that area, before bleaching occurs ,,also being so compact Mold and mildew are are at a higher percentage
Was reading a post above guy saying Aero is the fastest in growth rates ???
Again there is no difference one is sitting in oxygenated water other is being misted

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In those pics I have 3k hps in a 10' canopy tunnel----after several years----never had any issues with bleaching or mold.

I don't understand your statement "you can only put so many watts per sq foot in that area"?

This is about watts per cubic foot----not sq ft.

There is at least 2 times the canopy area in this tunnel compared to just a flat canopy.

I was just responding to your comment-----no way to grow trees in aero.

A~~~

OK i found this post have a good read folks

couple of notes. HPA isn't really suited for herbs/leafy greens. The plants put on more biomass, but don't retain much water. So once harvested, they wilt very quickly unless quickly chilled. I like shallow raft systems for herbs and leafy greens. Some folks also find the texture of HPA grown herbs/leafy greens not appealing. They are very fleshy..

Plant support.. you're not going to be growing large plants with HPA. Problem many folks attempting HPA get into with cannabis is they try and grow the same size plant in HPA that they would in soil/hydro. That's just not going to work.

It will be small, single cola plants in a SOG style grow. I'd imagine over time plant genetics can be developed to work for this purpose. There's no point growing a large plant in HPA. Leverage the faster growth time by doing more cycles per year. In the end, it's all about grams/COG/watt. Growers need to get over the huge cola's, that's not where the commercial market will go. The commercial industry will move towards extraction when it scales after federal legalization, so cola size won't matter. Drying, trimming and curing is too labor intensive.

HPA is more expensive, vastly more expensive. But so is a Budwiser plant vs a copper moonshine still in the Kentucky mountains. Right now the legal cannabis industry is dominated by folks who want to make the most money they can, in the least amount of time. They're not thinking about CAPEX/ROI or future market S&P.. hell most growers don't even know what that is. They can get away with it now because market S&P isn't matured.

I've been involved in HPA research for 4 years now and have invested $1.2M in developing the tech. My Company is the one Madlabs is talking about. We've been collaborating with MIT and started a project with Tweed. We've learned a lot.

HPA is the future, it's going to drive the COG's so low that guys growing in a medium, under HPS's won't be able to compete. When the industry goes legal, the big money will roll in and they will want technology.. not scaled up basement grows. The day will come when a vape pen oil cartridge will be vastly cheaper than dried flowers.. consumers will change their habits due to cost.

Getting HPA to work with cannabis commercially is going to require R&D. It will work, but we've got to do real science to figure it out. We've started that R&D, so hang in there..

Guess which forum the guy your talking about came looking for hpa information
Indhrvest, joined16th june 2012, last active 12th sept 2013, i guess he may pop back up in the next month or two to promote his hobby hpa system
Here`s some roots tweed managed to grow, still dialling it in apparently.

Just don't get trapped the more u do the less you live it will steal your life away I have lost years for quality be smart it hard believe me

The future of cannabis, it will go the way of many large corporations. There will still be mom and pop specialty shops but it will be more like the Micro Brew industry. You have your Budweiser but now there are a million small breweries competing against them. Here in the NW you will see far more people order an IPA than a Budweiser. The only Buds people order around here are the green kind! Over in the Mid-West it's a different story. Think quantity, not quality.

Things like vapor pens will always be around just because they're convenient. At the same time many people will still prefer a nice iced bong hit. I wouldn't be surprised to see something like Coca-Cola pens being sold at the local head shop before long. As I'm sure everyone knows Coca Cola had cocaine in it before it became illegal. I can see it now...Cana Cola - The taste of the...aaahh...what was I saying?...generation.

@ Darth Looks like they might be available in 3 months. The projected price is as expected..ridiculous

we're looking at under $3,000 MSRP for the large HPA unit. With 1,040 watt of LED, frame and everything, we should be around $8,500 MSRP for a complete 4X8X2 unit

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Atomizer said:

@ Darth Looks like they might be available in 3 months. The projected price is as expected..ridiculous

"we're looking at under $3,000 MSRP for the large HPA unit. With 1,040 watt of LED, frame and everything, we should be around $8,500 MSRP for a complete 4X8X2 unit"

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Are they high?..oh wait..probably..I could outfit half my basement..probably with money left over, for $8500, granted not a high tech HPA system I keep thinking about building some LP aero Stinkbud type systems and throwing them up on Craigslist..figure a 3 unit setup( clone/veg/flower) would cost under $200 or so to build, could all be built in under a day, and i think i could get somewhere around $500 for a set...I could probably throw in a light and basic nutes for something around $800.

owe yeah perfect for the person starting up a company go broke before it even harvests anything lol sounds like a perfect business plan if your living in usa i guess .Far as i am concerned HPA LPA is a fucking joke end of story its just one way to keep the roots wet and feeding transport
but at the end of the day its just more shit to cause you grief from clogging to power loss to what ever ...
Anyone claiming it will out grow DWC is really a noob it is just one style of growing NFT DWC RDWC and this
spraying root system with nutrients or having it in nutrients with the the 02 molecule present

Darth Vapour said:

owe yeah perfect for the person starting up a company go broke before it even harvests anything lol sounds like a perfect business plan if your living in usa i guess .Far as i am concerned HPA LPA is a fucking joke end of story its just one way to keep the roots wet and feeding transport
but at the end of the day its just more shit to cause you grief from clogging to power loss to what ever ...
Anyone claiming it will out grow DWC is really a noob it is just one style of growing NFT DWC RDWC and this
spraying root system with nutrients or having it in nutrients with the the 02 molecule present

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i agree, aero is NOT always better, ive had better yields with dwc and ebb n flow, with less work...also the high pressure aero is just a waste of money, u still get cloggs, and like said a power out will be disasterous, wile in dwc a power out wont have dry roots in an hour..

You either have no experience of hpa or your taking about HPA with a 120/240v high pressure pump and nothing else (LPA using a hp pump). I never get clogged nozzles and power outages dont have any affect on the mist. I use 12v dc for pump, timers and solenoids, 100L accumulator once charged to 140psi can run a large hpa system for days. If the power goes out a 7ah battery is enough to run the timer and solenoids for a month solid. I keep a fully charged 12v leisure battery on standby to run the 160psi pump and if/when that goes flat after a couple of weeks i can still charge the accumulator manually using a 50-bar hydrostatic test pump. The lack of light will kill the plants but that`ll take longer than it does for dwc roots to suffocate

Atomizer said:

You either have no experience of hpa or your taking about HPA with a 120/240v high pressure pump and nothing else (LPA using a hp pump). I never get clogged nozzles and power outages dont have any affect on the mist. I use 12v dc for pump, timers and solenoids, 100L accumulator once charged to 140psi can run a large hpa system for days. If the power goes out a 7ah battery is enough to run the timer and solenoids for a month solid. I keep a fully charged 12v leisure battery on standby to run the 160psi pump and if/when that goes flat after a couple of weeks i can still charge the accumulator manually using a 50-bar hydrostatic test pump. The lack of light will kill the plants but that`ll take longer than it does for dwc roots to suffocate

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its good u have back up battery..i never thought to do that, but i switched back to dwc after 1 flower,8 weeks.. i had lots of problems with clogged jets, and i tried everything to keep particles out of the res w/ no success..then roots clogged them up..mine was on a/c power..ive tried all methods of hydro and succeded with all, but the aero worked well just to much work to continue..everyone prefers one way over another, im against the wall as dwc, and ebb n flow were my favs, but as for cloning aero is deffinatly best, so i have a clone king and built my own 60 site aero cloner both are low pressure, 400 gal/min pumps..i have to clean jets weekly or every 2 weeks but its worth it since ive had 100% clone rate since switching to aero cloners wile i had a 80-90% with clone domes and rock wool..

TheChemist77 said:

. i had lots of problems with clogged jets, and i tried everything to keep particles out of the res w/ no success..

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My micro jet sprayers rarely clogged.

I used a 2" pvc cross and added stainless steel 1000 micron screen (hard to see in pic).

In this example, I cut three 1/2" pieces of 2" pvc pipe and wedged the screen in.

A~~~

If you run fully soluble nutes drain to waste you shouldnt have any clogging issues even without any filters in the system. The stuff that clogs nozzles generally originates in the root chamber, not much benefit to sending filtered rootzone crap and warm spent nutes back to a balanced cool sterile res.

bluntmassa1 said:

Hey, I'm thinking of giving hydro a try. I almost want to build an aeroponics system but everywhere I turn someone is saying it is more advanced, harder or some shit.

It don't look much harder to me though and sounds like the best hydro system just a bit harder to build one other than that what is so much harder about it?

Also does it even yield more than ebb and flow? That thing just looks so easy too build.

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Honestly, All you need is a 5 Gallon Bucket, or multiples, a Decent Air Pump from a Fish tank, An Air Stone, your Pot and your Medium. All those extra additions only create more problems down the road, and they may increase growth by 1%-5% not enough to actually make a difference, Growing Hydroponic from Soil only gives you an increase of about 25% as it is.

I also use a different type of system as well, Cause most people don't do there math.. See you need to understand roots for the best results, So this is what I did: I made my own net pots, where the bottom half was opened up for roots, and the top half wasn't. I filled the bottom half with rockwool, and placed a Peat Moss / Perilite mix on the top half. This will allow the bottoms of the roots to grow down into the reservoir, while the tops of the roots are growing in the peat moss /perilite mix. The reasoning for this, is the bottoms of the roots are designed to take up the water, while the top parts of the roots are designed to take up nutrients, so your roots will take up nutrients better if you gave them nutrients with water as you would if it was planted in soil. I have tested this, and the Dual Soil / Hydro grow is about 30% bigger then the straight hydro grow, and about 50% bigger then the straight soil grow. Just my personal opinion though cause everyone has there own system. But this was the easiest, cheapest, and simplest to control solution for me, and its working out great..... "Easier to fix issues with nutrients when you are putting the nutrients in the soil as well this makes it a safer more reliable solution"

Cant see how any of the above relates to aero but still. Its easier to fix nute issues in hpa as mist and air doesnt have the time lag. Correct a nute or ph issue in hpa and it`ll take a couple of hours to show up in the plant, with soil you may be waiting a couple of days.

one benefit to hpa is the plants deal with ph fluctuations very well, i d k if its because its just a mist or what, but ive noticed in high power aero the ph doesnt really matter as long as its not way off..

The ph and EC doesnt fluctuate if nothing ever comes back. The last drop is the same as the first

Atomizer said:

The ph and EC doesnt fluctuate if nothing ever comes back. The last drop is the same as the first

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I've never run drain to waste. I see the logic if not crazy expensive.

What size is your system (rez and lights)?

How much nutes drain every day?

Thanks,

A~~~

Alaric said:

I've never run drain to waste. I see the logic if not crazy expensive.

What size is your system (rez and lights)?

How much nutes drain every day?

Thanks,

A~~~

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On the face DTW seems to be..well, wasteful, but it must depend on the system setup. I'm going off a LP/NFT hybrid system..not HPA..which could be more efficient. A 29L res lasts me 7-10 days in a recirc type system, just doing rough calculations based on the system I have, if I were to change out to a DTW without changing anything else about my system, it would pump out somewhere near 26L per pump cycle with the same 400gph( appx 1514lph) pump run 1 min on 5 off, so 290L/hour, just over 6200L/day..that works out to over 1600gal/day...i had to do that math like 4 times because i couldn't believe those numbers... What's the application rates of atomized HPA?

@Atomizer..i quoted the wrong post..this was for you..

^^thanks anyway.

I can see how DTW would be well suited for a drip system-----but HPA?

Am I missing something?

A~~~